Unclear and Present Danger - The Fugitive (feat. Michael Liroff)

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Jamelle and John are joined by Michael Liroff of the Five Four podcast to discuss “The Fugitive,” a masterpiece of Dad cinema. They talk the liberal politics of the 1990s, the surprisingly nuanced racial politics of the film, and complain, as always, that they just don’t make them like this anymore.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more.Links from the episode!The New York Times front-page for August 6, 1993Toni Morrison on Bill ClintonWikipedia entry on Harold Washington, the 51st mayor of ChicagoAlso, a quick note: Jamelle said this was the 27th episode of the podcast, ti is actually the 28th! Our apologies for the mistake.

I came home there was a man in my house. He had an artificial arm. Are you saying that I killed my wife? Are you saying that I crushed her skull? And that I shot her? All right, ladies and gentlemen, listen up. We have a fugitive that's been on the run for 90 minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground barring injury is four miles an hour. that will give you a radius of six miles.

What I want out of each and every one of you is a hard target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, hen house, outhouse, outhouse, or doghouse in this area. Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimball. Go get him. I don't know. Welcome to Episode Welcome to episode 27 of unclear and present danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers with the

1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. My name is Jamal Bowie. I am a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gans. I write a substack newsletter called A Popular Front, and I'm working on a book about American politics in the early 1990s. And today we are talking about the fugitive, directed by Andrew Davis, a frequent unclear and present danger director.

and starring Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sella Ward, Joe Pantleano, and a lot of other people, he will instantly recognize it as that kind of movie. Here is a short plot synopsis. After being framed for the murder of his wife and sentenced to death, Dr. Richard Kimball escapes from custody following a bus crash and sets out to find the real killer and clear his name while being hunted by the police and a team of U.S. Marshals. Before we get started, if you somehow have never. never seen the fugitive, which sounds insane to me. But if it's nothing, if it's something you've never done, you should go watch the fugitive. It's compulsively watchable. It's great. It's available to buy or rent on iTunes and Amazon. I did not check it to see if you're streaming anywhere,

but if it is streaming somewhere, I'm sure it's probably either going to be Hulu or HBO Max. Great movie. You can also buy the Blu-ray like I did, 20th anniversary, Blu-ray. It looks fine. 10 bucks at Best Buy. a guest today. Very exciting. Michael, why don't you introduce yourself. Hi, everybody. My name is Michael Learoff. I am a recovering lawyer and host of the 5-4 podcast or co-host of the 5-4 podcast, which is a podcast about the Supreme Court and how negatively we feel towards it as an institution. I'm thrilled to be here. I love your podcast. And I love this movie. So I'm very excited to talk about it. We are looking forward to the conversation. I am a big fan of 5-4 podcast. I was lucky to be a guest not

too long ago. If you do not listen to 5-4, you should. It's a great podcast just for learning about constitutional law. And if you fucking hate the Supreme Court, you can get that affirmed. So you should listen to 5-4. Before we get started with the conversation, let's look at the New York Times page for the day of release in the United States, which was August 6, 1993. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on here. The first one that jumps out that's most relevant to our podcast is Nationalist Serbs said they will ease siege of Sarajevo. Valfo's natal threat. They offer to ease pressure on Bosnia's capital and open supply routes to the city.

Serbian nationalist leaders met here an emergency session today and announced a pullback of their troops from nearly one territory on two strategic mountains southwest of Sarajevo, apparently fearing that the failure to do so could bring on the NATO airstrikes threatened earlier this week if the Serbian forces continued their strangulation of Sarajevo. This may be our first episode where we're directly in the NATO intervention in the Bosian War. But this article reflects that. And below, there's a sub thing that's U.S. seeks broader strikes. Washington is said to be pressing for NATO airstrikes against Serbian forces to include roads, bridges, depots, and command posts. So, you know, NATO obviously was an alliance created for the Cold War. This is having its kind of first post-Cold War use case, which was in the wars in post-Yukoslavia

and the consequent genocides that happened. Israel minister meets PLO aid, breaking a longstanding tip. This is the beginning of the process towards the Camp David Accords, which ultimately did not work, but which was a hopeful time. With the knowledge of Prime Minister of Tucker Bean and Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Sarid met secretly with a senior Palestinian Liberation Organization member in Cairo, shattering one of the Israel's most rigid political tattoos, senior taboos not tattoos, senior Israeli officials say. The news of the meeting unleashed an acrimonist exchange in Israel between those who believe. and the country must be open to direct negotiations with the PLO, and those who believe that the state should have no contact with what they term a terrorist group.

So this was a big diplomatic breakthrough, and this led to negotiations that were supposed to end the Israeli-Palestin conflict, of course. It did not work out for a number of different reasons, and as we see now, the far right is now, ascendant in in israeli politics pretty depressing situation let's see what else kind of could apply here juliani begins making message to the airwaves after months of intermittent skirmishing rudolph w juliani has moved the new york city mayoral campaign into the very high frequency where that really counts paid television radio advertising that starts by

portraying the former prosecutor is a warm regular guy in an effort to preempt major david Dinkins. The silent tagline on one of his TV commercials reads, he'll fight as hard for you and your family as does for his own. Yeah. Giuliani, you know, who was not quite as apparently deranged at the time, but still to his critics, it was clear where things were going, was leading a pretty nasty and racist campaign against Dinkins, who was New York's first black mayor.

Let's see what else. House passes budget plan back in Clinton by 218 to 216 after hectic maneuvering, suspense in Senate. Carry of Nebraska now holds key to victory. After day of frantic maneuvering to lock up the final votes, the House of our president was nearly approved. President closed his five-year economic plan tonight, putting him on the verge of his most important victory of his young presidency. The vote in doubt until the final gavel was 218 to 216. Yeah, as, you know, Clinton's first years in office were really a struggle. I mean, he's considered to be like a very successful, cany, politically able president.

But in the first couple of years, everybody thought he was going down. And he was really having struggle getting his agenda through. There was a lot of resistance. He was having trouble corraling even Democrats. And this kind of reflects this. You know, the Clinton of, you know, coasting to victory in 1996 and leaving office enormously popular, even after the Lewinsky scandal. Everyone thought he might be a one-term president in the first couple of years.

So that's that. Anything else look interesting to you here? Not so much. On the Clinton stuff, I mean, we've talked about this before, but it kind of just goes to the fact that the Democratic Party, which is a much more ideologically diverse party in the early 90s still. I mean, we're still basically before. 1984. 1984 really kind of is the dividing mark for the kind of collapse of the southern wing of

the Democratic Party or the White South. Right. Yeah. Kind of the beginning of the erosion in old strong hordes, strong hord, strong holds in the west in the mountain west. And so, you know, right here it says in this in this story, Bob Kerry of Nebraska holds key to victory for the Democrats. I mean, that that's right there like an illustration of what I mean. Kind of a pivot. Senator being a Nebraska Democrat. And for Nebraska to elect the Democrat these days would be basically a miracle. Yeah. Yeah.

And Kerry was pretty liberal, really. I mean, for the time, at least, he was considered to be a liberal Democrat. Yeah, things have changed. There was also an interesting little note at the bottom of the page because we're also coming to the end of apartheid. There's an interesting little note. Mandela warns followers, Nelson Mandela, sailed followers for violence and black townships near Joheisburg,

booze met with jeers and calls for guns. So I think that the image that's grown up of the end of apartheid as being, you know, free of violence and based on, you know, Mandela's leadership, it was mostly true. But there was, it was a lot more chaotic and violent than is recalled. And there were many people in the ANC who were impatient. You know, understandably with the negotiations stand apartheid. So that was just sort of a, you know, again, the end of apartheid is part of the post-Cold

War story because once the Cold War ends, you know, the raise on Detra for South Africa as a kind of buffer state in the Cold War where they could get away with the shit that they did ended suddenly. And everyone was like, you know, there's no reason to tolerate this anymore, really. So, yeah, I just thought that that. was an interesting thing to know. Out of curiosity, I just went to the opinion page. Yeah.

And it is boring as hell. The real depth of the 90s here, the sleepy 90s. You know, there's an opinion on how the Clinton tax plan will hurt the economy. Didn't really turn out like that. No. There's a column here about the bond. market, which I can't really parse at the moment, a column about how lawyers are corrupt, which, you know.

Hey, we were just talking about that. That was like a big obsession of the 1990s. Yeah. I mean, you know, today, today's opinion page these days, I can't, I can't speak too frankly about it, but I was going to say. These days have like, you know, I don't know who listens to this from the time. So I kind of, I got to stay. I was kind of shocked you were talking even about the historic ones.

I was like, Jamel. No, the historic ones, I can, I'm free. I'm free. Because there's no one here who's, it's like, it's like no one named. It's like just random people. I all say is that at the very least, today's opinion page is like interesting, right? Like there's something that will like, you know, catch your eye or make you mad or whatnot. And this is, this is just like, you know.

This is what you imagine a character, like a Jack Ryan reading at breakfast and being like, oh, pretty interesting. Richard Kimball. Yeah, exactly. You see this, honey? Yeah. Various Harrison Ford characters read this. Yeah. There's a reason why people have a nostalgic feeling for the era because it felt very safe and regular and not terribly exciting, but that was fine.

I mean, I think, you know, it's, I think, you know, if you go a year or two earlier, there's a lot of turmoil. But once you start to get into the Clinton presidency, things do settle down as far as Americans are concerned in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think this is sort of what, you know, Democrat politicians are talking about when they are like, talk about a return to normalcy. And it's really what they're thinking about, right? an era where, you know, things felt a little more low stakes, right? Yep, yep, absolutely. I think a lot of, and I think a lot of actually the, some of the, more on the right or the center right, it's replaying a 90s culture war, but a lot of the impatience

with political correctness or wokeness, quote unquote, is like a lot of Gen Xers who are very nostalgic for the 1990s and just want the social norms, they were like, they like things are fine and there's no reason to like for things to to to be that much different than the way they were in the 1990s. So I think that that's definitely like it's kind of has a hold on people's minds in that way too. Yeah. Okay. So the fugitive. Before we get to the plot and on themes and stuff, I try to always talk a little bit about the background. This movie is obviously based on a television show from the 60s. The fugitive. I've never seen this show. Uh, at all. It was never, I was a kid who watched a lot of TV land. And so there's a lot of

television from the 60s that I've absorbed. But I've never seen, uh, the fugitive television show. This was a period in Hollywood when they were remaking lots of 60s and 70s television shows into films. There was the Brady Bunch movie. Um, uh, there was a bunch of stuff. And I cannot recall all of it. But this was a thing. The Fugitive is sort of one of the first examples of it. It was sort of contemporaneous with the post-Batman 89, kind of like, let's see if kids will watch a movie based off the shadow or the phantom or one of those things. Lots of mining, basically the childhoods of executives for scripts and ideas and content. We've talked about Andrew Davis before.

He directed the package, which is a Tommy Lee Jones Gene Hackman movie. He directed Under Siege, which is probably the best Steven Seagull. movie which we've talked about and we've talked about Tommy Lee Jones precisely because he was in two previous movies I think we haven't said anything about Harrison Ford on this podcast or we have no we have but I haven't done a ton of jumping into his background Harrison Ford is at this point I mean he is a megastar there's not a ton to say about Harrison Ford because he is so iconic at this point this is movies filmed in 92 it's released in 93 he is already been Han Solo. He's already been Indiana Jones. He's already been Rick Decker

from Blade Runner. It's like he's kind of already had his most iconic performances. He had already starred in Witness, which is a terrific film. He was already Henry and regarding Henry. Is that true? I don't know. I'm just saying things. Yes, yes, he was. Yeah. I mean, I'm just, I mean, the 80s were really his decade. And so, you know, witness, frantic. I mean, I'll say this. The 80s were his decade. The fugitive does fit with his previous movies and that it is kind of the last of the Harrison Ford. I didn't insert crime my wife movies. So there's frantic where I believe the plot is that his wife is kidnapped and he is suspected of doing it. That's a Polansky. Is it Plansky?

Yep, that's Plansky. It's good, problematic as they all are. Oh, that's one I haven't seen. Yeah, I haven't seen that. It's good. It's good. We watched, my wife and I watched it a couple years ago, and I was like, okay, we're going to watch a Harrison Ford thriller from the 80s that we have not seen before.

Fair warning, it's directed by Roman Palanty. And then he was in presumed innocent, which is a late Alan Pacula movie, which is also great. and is a I didn't cheat on my wife slash murder her or I didn't cheat on my college yeah he's really always not murdering his wife which my my wife was commented on this it's interesting that like Ford who is this sort of archetypal leading man right sort of like he is the leading man of this period in American cinema, could play characters accused of cheating on wives, killing wives, I mean, kind of in this mode.

And he doesn't have kind of an outward, he doesn't seem outwardly sinister. You know, he's not like Ryan Gosling, who does seem kind of creepy a little bit. Or Robert Pattinson, who just has like kind of a weird vibe about him. You could believe he would do it, maybe. Yeah. Right. But of course, I was thinking about that earlier. I was like, do you think your friends would be as nice to you as Harrison Ford's friends in this movie?

Later in the 90s, he'll be in the Zemeckis film What Lies Beneath? I was going to say, this is what makes what lies beneath the work, though, right? Right. Right. That twist works because he's got this. He was Richard Kimball. Yeah, and all these movies. He's got the vibe of like, you're like, you're like,

like, okay, he's being, you know, falsely accused or whatever. And then it's like, no, he's actually playing against type here for once and, uh, cheated on his wife and then killed a student lover, right? That movie, so what lies beneath, not to do too many tangents, although listeners do like tangents, um, not to do too many tangents. What lies beneath? Very flawed movie. Not one is the Mexic's best.

Kind of decent forward performance, but it's not, it's not great. It does have a wonderful homage to the Charles Lottin movie, Night of the Hunter, sort of the, not to spoil too much, but Harrison Ford's, what's her name? Why can't I just, why did Michelle Fiper plays Harrison Ford's wife and what lies beneath, and she dies and I think she dies. Yeah, and there's a great homage. Does she die? Does she die?

A woman dies and she is, no, I think maybe she almost dies, but anyway, she's in the water and she's sort of like trying to get out of a car that's been crashed into the water or something like that. And it's an homage to net at the hunter and I really like it. Anyway, the fugitive was a huge hit. I mean, like a massive hit grossed something like $300 million off of a budget of $44 million. Um, I was, I saw, I saw someone complaining. So, uh, saw someone complaining that, uh, you know, they really make movies for adults anymore. This is a movie for adults and it just did a incredible, uh, did incredible at the box office. It got a bunch of, um, nominations for best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Best Cinematography, for Best Film Editing, Original Score, Sound, Sound Editing at the Academy Awards. And Tommy Lee Jones actually won for Best Supporting Actor, which is totally checks out. And then it kind of got a ton of nominations for picture, director, acting roles, kind of like all down the line. So a very successful movie.

There was a sequel, Spinoff, U.S. Marshals, which isn't as successful, but we'll be covering that on this podcast. And there are people who really like that one. So I'm not going to dismiss it. Michael, you said you're a big fan of this movie. Yes. And I'm not going to go through plot stuff for listeners. Brief plot synopsis. We'll touch on it as we go. But first, Michael, why do you like this movie so much? It seems like a silly question. You know, I think what you said about films for adults, right? Like it's a movie that doesn't insult your intelligence. It's really well-paced. uh, well acted. Um, I find the characters. There are a lot of characters who are like easily,

uh, likable. And you just enjoy their presence on screen like Tommy Lee Jones. You like love every scene he's in. Harrison Ford is great. Um, and, uh, I don't know. There's something about this like sort of Ronan trying to clear his name genre of movie that really like hits me, right? Like mission impossible from a few years later also later on Michael Clayton I think falls sort of in this sort of archetype as well those movies like really do it for me and this is just a very well done version of that right like it's just super tight there's nothing extraneous as watching it again I was thinking about how like today there would be maybe some pressure to like explain like where is Richard Kimball getting his money and where and this is just like look he's smart

he figures it out they tell you he's smart they should you him borrowing some money from a friend, but other than that, they're just like, he's a smart guy and he'll figure shit out and don't worry about it. And they don't, like, bother you with unimportant nonsense, right? It's just, it's super tight and suspenseful and, I don't know, really gratifying. No, I think that's right. And I think, you know, watching it is time with an eye maybe towards the larger political environment. I do think this is another one of those movies that speaks to the kind of a white guy anxiety of the 1990s, kind of the sense it's sort of like the well-established upper middle class white guy is under siege. Right.

In American society. I think that's right. Although I was thinking like, I was like this does have a sort of interesting racial politics, I think. I don't know. Maybe I'm imagining things, but it paints a picture, I think, of a very stratified Chicago, right? Like, There's no black people in the, you know, Tony fundraiser flashbacks. All the high-end doctors and administrators are white. All the leadership is white. Cops are mostly white. Prisoners are far more diverse.

I think there's like a moment, right? Like there's a scene where there's a bus accident and there's a, there's a, the hospital is going crazy. And, you know, Kimball is there trying to do research, trying to find the man who murdered his wife. posing as a janitor and he gets enlisted to, you know, take a kid to observation. And the kid needs immediate medical help. And he's being overlooked. A white doctor doesn't check the film on this black kid who can barely breathe. And our hero, Richard Kimball, a former doctor, checks the film, sees that something's wrong.

Instead of taking him to the observation, he puts himself at risk of being exposed. to take him to the ER or the OR, whichever. And I think the film, it's like, we don't know he's safe until he's delivered to, like, a black doctor and a black nurse who then take the kids seriously, right? I think there's something there, you know, and this is the early 90s, right? This is, this movie was written in production during the, like, the L.A. race riots, right? And, you know, we were talking about Bill Clinton early in his presidency when he was like, they used to say he was the first black president, right? Because I don't know, the racial

politics of the time, I feel like if you made this movie today, people would be like angry that it's woke about this stuff. Also, like the white prison guard abandons his black compatriot in the bus. And our hero, Richard Kimball takes the black prison guard and saves him. You know, there's something, I don't know, there's something there. I'm not sure. We know that he's a liberal probably, right? Because he's a, he's an upper middle class guy. decent guy. Yeah. He probably voted for Harold Washington.

Yes. Maybe he even had a fundraiser for Harold Washington. You know what? He 100% Richard Kimball 100% had a fundraiser for Harold Washington. It was sort of like, he had some skeptical friends. And he was like, no, no, no. This guy, you know, he's the real deal. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So he is, I think this bugs conservatives about Hollywood is just like. showing characters, decent, honest characters that seem to have kind of like liberal views, not

totally prejudiced. They're like, that's, God damn, liberal Hollywood. Like, you know, it's things as subtle as that. They might not be able to cop to it. Right. But that's what's often what's bugging them. It's just like, I'm putting, you know, so I think, I think what you're saying is right. I think there is also as another kind of quasi or sub-political theme.

There's the stuff with the evil pharmaceutical research, and he's uncovering that. So it's kind of showing, like, these people will stop at nothing to do their evil, you know, profit-making scheme. And it takes decent people like Dr. Richard Kimball to stop them. And he made the ultimate sacrifice, et cetera, et cetera. So there is this little bit of a, and he ends up kind of making almost a political speech at the end where he like accuses the guy in public. So there is sort of a politics of the movie, which I guess you could say was vaguely liberal because the bad guys are pharmaceutical schemers or something like that. One thing I would have to say is like would they really try to, I guess, I guess they're that bad. But would they really try to assassinate him?

Wouldn't there be easier ways? Or and then frame him, you know, wouldn't there be easier ways? I don't know. But that's, that is sort of a political. Yeah. And this guy, the one-armed man, the villain, is like a hitman, basically. He's the security guy of the pharmaceutical company, as it turns out, right? They discover.

So, you know, the pharmaceutical company is like basically criminal, you know. And he's a form of cop. I was going to say. Which is also kind of lived, right? Yeah. Because he's a cop. And, you know, it's not the kind of movie where all cops are portrayed as being infallible. And in fact, the way that they portray Tommy Lee Joan,

Tommy Joe's ultimately a decent cop. He's a fad, which liberal Hollywood always likes more than local cops. But he's a, but he's kind of shown to be sort of like a mind. mindless figure, and then he eventually kind of like discovers his, I don't know, not humanity, but his ability to kind of reason through the situation and see who the good guy was. But, but, you know, before he's just like, mindlessly, I don't care. He says, I don't care. He's just like, I'm here to enforce the law.

Right. There is something political hovering or in the background or pre-political hovering in the background of this movie for sure. Yeah, their portrayal of local cops. is is awesome like yeah yeah the the bad guy the one-ard man he's a former cop who's now a hit man and then like the Chicago PD like the detectives are like just morons right like just like open morons there's a scene where they're like you know the feds are talking to them going over the files and they're like all right so why did Richard Kimball kill his wife and they're like well

she was rich and they're like well she was rich they also have to do their Chicago right right and to a really high degree and Tommy Lee Jones it's like well he was a heart surgeon he was already rich and they're like yeah but she was more rich and then they like cut to Tommy Lee Jones being like you guys are fucking idiot right like giving them this look like all right thanks thanks for this that you guys have been a huge help um I think those guys were at least one of them was actually a former detective they they cast yeah yeah like real yeah I think I know which actor you're talking about I mean he's the guy who looks like he beat someone in the head about the phone book.

Yes. Right. It's so good, though. Just like, just total idiots. It's like, yeah, Logopede are morons. There's some decency in the feds, but, you know, you have to really get to it, right? Like, you have to work to pull it out of them. The assumptions of this movie really vibe with me, right?

Yeah. Well, it's like who are the people you can count on in society? Well, a doctor and a U.S. and the federal, like a federal agent, there should be a genre name or something about this, because it is, and I'm being a little hard on us liberals today, but this is a big part of liberal mindset is this competence. I want to say, just not to be too crude, but like competence porn, which is like, there's like a person who's just like, they're so good at their job, they're so good at their job, and you can, we can rely on them. And in this case, it's like,

oh, well, this doctor, he's so smart. and he can solve all these problems. And also, what a decent guy, et cetera, et cetera. And then the cop, who is sort of his antagonist, but turns out to be a good guy, is also like he's very good at his job. And he's not, he's not bumbling. Like, it's not like it's, it's a one very smart guy against another very smart guy. And it's not tragic. Like, tragic is like when there's two good guys or two people with noble motives facing off against each other. But this is like whatever the liberal version of tragedy or, like, is, which is like, you have two hyper-competent people who are decent and good at their jobs. And you know what? They come to some common ground.

It's almost like the West Wing in that way. It's like we have very different views. But one day, like, we can just like get, we'll see eye to eye and we'll really, it will respect each other. Find out they're not enemies at all. You and I are not so different. And, and we can hash out a deal and justice will be served. So that's, I think, also another thing. The movie is not politically liberal. It's like pre-politically liberal and ways that are not bad. But I think, like, in the Trump era, the reason why a movie, like, The Future feels so good

and nostalgic is like that sort of like the society is made up of people like Dr. Richard Kimball and the good cop, the good U.S. marshals. And, you know, as long as those kinds of folks around and those are the back corners of the country, we can't go wrong. And then we discovered that everyone's fucking insane. Like this, like the whole, the whole mythology of the 90s. Yeah. Everybody was Harrison Ford essentially. Yeah. Or Tommy Lee Jones. And then we discover, no, they're not. No, it turns out your brain surgeon is actually, what, like Ben Carson. Yeah. Right, right. Like, I think, I think it's just like there was a these movies gave a picture of america as made up of decent resourceful honest

intelligent people who could find common ground even when they had serious differences yeah sounds nice yeah so i wanted to return to the point about the movie's interesting racial politics because i think there really is something there it's both in how the movie is not at all subtle about how Ford Kimball uses his racial identity to escape detection. And it does that by basically sort of like juxtaposing him with his fellow escapee who was like a stereotypical black convict, like big guy, sort of like scowl on this vehicle all the time, and who Tommy Lee Jones and his crew immediately find, immediately track him down and kind of like bring kind of the full force.

of the full weight of the state on him with Jones basically like killing him summarily in the house in which he's staying. And I think in the director's commentary, Davis says at that location, that scene. And this is I mean, this is, I'd say 30, 40 minutes into the film. We've already seen the murder

of Kimball's wife. We've already seen the train crash, which is I didn't know this. Apparently it was a big deal when the movie came out, but they crashed an actual train into an actual bus and did a whole thing, which is very cool. Very cool. Davis said that they had 27 cameras shooting.

I'm just, I can't imagine going to like a studio and being like, listen, we're going to need $5 million to do one shot and we can only do it one time and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. That's the magic of movies, baby. But that scene is on location. It's an old south side neighborhood near like an old factory and used to be an African American and kind of like ethnic white, I think European. white enclave in that part of in that part of town and I think it's such an interesting juxtaposition with where we see Kimball most of the time which is in he's in a bed he's in

a hospital I think he's in a bank at one point or city hall that he's in places of either power or like middle class respectability wherever in places where he can blend in quite easily just by dying his hair shaving his goatee putting on a blazer right sort of doing that and all of a sudden he is he blends in with his surroundings. I just, I think the movie is like absolutely knows what it's doing in that regard. I mean, there's a whole scene where he loses, he loses his tail by walking through a St. Patrick's Day parade.

Right. Very, very famous scene, right? Yeah. And it's just sort of like putting a pin on the fact that the movie is aware that Kimball's whiteness is probably his single best asset in trying to evade Gerard. Right. And he can be any kind of guy. Yeah.

He sort of like loses his class position in a certain way. Like he becomes very poor. And like he has to kind of like look like a down and out person and can blend into that role. And then is able to just switch it on and like be, I'll get a middle class again. Yeah. Yeah. They make, I feel like I hadn't thought about it like that. But if you juxtapose, right, like that scene where they, you know,

you know, this guy is sort of extra judicially murdered, right? Like, to the scene where Kimball is, like, escaping the hospital, right? Like, he, he shaves his beard, he slicks back his hair and puts on a doctor's coat. And, like, a cop stops him and is like, hey, Doc, we're looking for somebody who might be injured. And, like, it describes Richard Kimball to him. And he's like, you see anybody like that? And he just goes, every time I look in this. mirror, pal, except for the beard, of course, and can just walk away, right? Like, it's just

so... Yeah, because he's dressed like a doctor, so he's a figure of authority. Right. It's got this class thing. Right. It's just like so simple for him, right? So, so very easy. Yeah, no, I think that's right. I hadn't considered that, but that's a great scene too. Yeah. Well, he's very clever. Yes, he is. He's so clever. Yeah. Going back to the politics of of the pharmaceutical company also. Yeah. Because they sort of keep it low key in a lot of ways, talking about like the culpability

of the pharmaceutical company writ large. But I was thinking about it, like Sykes says, Sykes is the murderer, the guy who kills Kimball's wife, the ex-cop. He says 15 people alibied him, that he was in Cancun at some junkie. it, you know, another nice thing they illustrate was, you know, paying off doctors to play ball, right, with their pharmaceuticals, taking him on fancy trips and all that. But 15 people alibied him, right? 15 presumably doctors and high up executives at this pharmaceutical company alibed him for a murder.

That's fucking wild, actually. Like the implication there of like the scope of this conspiracy that there was just like a bunch of people that were like, yeah, we got a we got to off this guy. We got to get rid of him because because we have billions of dollars to make and he's going to be standing in the way. It's kind of wild and they like play it low key with that, you know, but it is, I think by any measure, a sprawling conspiracy. It's not just one or two people, right? No, that didn't really occur to me before, but it's true. is it a conspiracy or they just like assume that they saw him because he's just a like they just kind of this is weird group thing yeah i don't know i don't know i mean i guess

you could try to explain it that way but but i i like to think that actually like no at the end of this like there was just like a whole board room in cuffs right like yeah so what's interesting is that it's not clear to me in the film whether or not the conspiracy to get approval for this drug was just a matter of Kimball's friend, fellow doctor, and whoever he was working with, or if it did, in fact, involve the pharmaceutical company. And sort of, you know, to the extent of this plot, which is kind of like, it's like barely there, you know, sort of pops up at the end of the movie. To the extent that this has any, like, any political content, it seems actually to kind of posit the pharmaceutical company is almost like this neutral player, sort of it's there.

Obviously, it wants his drug approved or whatever, but it's not like, it's not, um, orchestrating the plot here. The plot is being orchestrated essentially by bad actors. And presumably if those bad actors weren't there, then none of this would have happened in the first place. It isn't sort of a, it isn't, the bad actions don't flow directly from kind of like the inherent position. No, but the guy, but I think, I don't know about that because the guy, the Sykes, the one on man works for the company. Did he just happen to meet him and that they met in a professional context so he used him? Or is that meant to imply that there's something more, that the company was also. I thought that, to me, I was like, oh, the company's in on it. Yeah. It's

interesting. I don't know. It's also, and this is actually something that I like about the movie is that it does leave some questions unanswered, right? Like when he, when Kimball confronts his former best friend who actually set him up for murder, right? He even, there There was another doctor who had been like involved in all this, um, Lentz, right, who then died. Um, and he says, you know, he just sort of off in and he's like, did you kill Lentz too, right? And it's like, well, did he? Maybe. Maybe not.

I don't know. Maybe Lentz just died. Maybe he was taken out too, right? Like it's just sort of like, we don't know the full story, I guess. Um, and, but that's okay because we're not, it's not about the movies. not about the pharmaceutical company, right? It's about Richard Kimball clearing his name. And he did that. And that other story is something else, right? Like, I don't know. It's very tightly focused in that way, right? We don't have to have like a big end of scene, end of movie like detailing

of the entire plot, you know, that led to the murder of his wife, right? Like, they're like, you guys understand that something bad happened. Nefarious is going on here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Beyond the racial politics and the pharmaceutical stuff, the movie isn't terribly explicitly political. I do think it does a decent job. And this is not a thing. I mean, this is actually very striking to me in modern blockbusters and modern movies of this sort, which tend to kind of posit like a generic kind of middle classness across all characters and all environments. This movie does take, you know, take time to show a Chicago that is not particularly middle class. It's working class that is somewhat away from the spotlight,

neglected even. And that is part of Richard Kimball's kind of journey in the film is his journey through, as you mentioned, John, he kind of loses his class status. I mean, that is represented kind of quite literally in terms of the environments he moves through as he tries to solve the mystery of the one-armed man. And I find that interesting because the 90s are really a time when, you know, because there is this general prosperity, there's rapid economic growth and all these things. The 90s are a time when movies kind of stop depicting working class life or working class environments in the same way, especially blockbusters, especially.

to the kind of things that people go to in the summer for escapism, which didn't used to be the case, yeah. No, because I think it was so depressing, I mean, like, and so hollowed out. And the movie shows him sort of in down and out places, you know, among people who are not in great straits and shows that the fall from prosperity from him being a doctor to the bottom of society's hard one. Yeah, I think that that's a great point. And I think that the reason why working class life wasn't portrayed much is because it didn't have the same kind of basis anymore. Yeah, he's posing as a janitor, right?

To get in and out of the hospital. He's living in, you know, some old woman's basement, right? Like in a pretty rundown neighborhood. Her son is a drug dealer, right? He's in falling on hard times. Yeah. And the picture of what life must be like for the janitor, right? That whose ID he steals, right, is not a pretty one.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, he kind of goes, he sees the underside. of the world that he would have ignored otherwise by being a fugitive. It's weird, like, that the idea of fugitive is just like, suddenly you're a working class person, right? You know, like, you know, and like, oh, wouldn't this suck? You know, well, that's somebody's life, you know? Like, that's not like his, like, adventure. Like, you're a little adventure where you restore, get restored back. He's like, that's somebody's entire life. But I think that's why I want to say the movie doesn't have an explicit politics, but it's kind of like culturally liberal

and in the sense that it has some sensitivity to what we talked about about these issues about class and race, but it kind of posits the decency of both, you know, government functionaries and professionals is what I'm saying. It's like that even though it doesn't have a politics And it kind of has a vague indictment how strong we don't really know, as Jamel pointed out, of some sort of corporate malfeasance. So we can say it's a kind of culturally liberal movie. And it makes sense that my family growing up loved this movie. Everybody in my family love this movie. And I like this movie.

Because it's sort of like this is not, it's not about elections. It's not about, you know, social problems. per se, but this is sort of like, it has a liberal worldview, is how I would put it. Two things. Relating back to the racial politics of the movie, I do think it's interesting that like the drug dealing son is just like a white kid. Yeah. I don't really to that very often. Yeah.

And also we mentioned earlier Tony Morrison's description of Bill Clinton as the first black president. And I actually think it's worth just kind of like reading that quote in full because I feel like no one ever sees the whole thing. And it kind of, it kind of, as we're talking about class in this movie and maybe sort of class politics in the 90s, you know, part of the Clinton and part of his trouble in Washington with the kind of established Beltway elites, including plenty members of his own party, was simply that he kind of gave up the impression of being a hick. Right. And so Morrison's description.

of Clinton's, you know, quote-unquote blackness. It's really interesting in light of that. She writes, After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness, single-parent household, born poor, working class, saxophone playing, McDonald's and junk food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American

Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the president's body, his privacy, his unpleased sexuality, became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and body-searched, Who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear. No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us,

we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away disgrace, and who knows, may be sentenced in jail to boot. In short, unless you do as we say, i.e. assimilate at once, your expletives belong to us. And Morrison later says that people misunderstood the phrase. that she said that he was being treated like a black on the street,

already guilty, already a perp. But it's just like an interesting, you know, nuance to the Clinton first black president kind of thing, sort of saying essentially that like the first black president is going to be treated like a street thug and in this provisional position, which, you know, it's not wrong. Yeah. It's not wrong, but I wonder if in historical retrospect, can we say, perhaps Tony Morrison was giving her rhetorical, you know, skills to a politician that she

liked at the time. And, you know, we all do that sort of thing. But, you know, I understand the argument and I see, and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's brilliantly insightful. But like, I, I find the, the populist hit Clinton to be not believable because he was such a, I mean, look, his background was, was humble. It was modest. This is true. But he was an aspiring elite. Right, right. He was a striver. He always loved, well, a striver he loved, which I mean, I guess is a sign of where he came from, but he wanted to be among the smart and the elite who ran the society. He did not take with him in the way that Nixon did a kind of populist grievance against this kind of stuff. He didn't have that anger or resentment against

the glamour of coastal elites. He really wanted to be part of them and was accepted, in my view. I think it may have taken a little while in D.C., but especially if you look at the way Hollywood and the world of literature took to him and to look at, intellectuals took to him because they thought he was one and he is. He's a bright guy who read, perhaps not, you know, the same sorts of things they did. But I think that he really was accepted. And now as an insider, the Clintons became, you know, which hurt them politically in the long run, that their conquest of cultural and social acceptance into the heart of elite liberalism, you know, totally ended their association with Arkansas and being, you know,

coming from these humble backgrounds. And they just became the symbol of the establishment, which is, I think, what they wanted. But it came to bite them in the ass in the end. No, I think, I think you're right, John, to say that kind of the, um, the thing about the Clintons is how, however humble their backgrounds may have been, they, they did, and have always aspired to elite status. And got it. Um, it's exactly. And they got it, right? Is it. It's exactly. And they got it. right. It is exactly right. It is what in retrospect made the decision to go all in with Hillary Clinton in 2016. So misguided because it was just sort of like it was a misreading of the national attitude, which really did seem to want something, if not to the right, but just like

with the anti-establishment affect. And there's just like no way, there's no way Hillary Clinton could have ever done that. And I kind of have this general sense that part of what, you know, we're recording this on November 8th. It's an election day. Who knows what's going to happen in the Senate or in the House. But there's a pretty good chance, decent chance, like better than even chance, that Democrats are going to lose both chambers of Congress. And so there's not really going to be lots of recriminations and arguments and et cetera, et cetera, after that. And it's going to, as they always do, it's going to look to ideology and policy, you know, if in the summer of 2020, AOC had never said defund the police and Democrats would have won. Or if Biden had just told the woke left to shut up, then Democrats would have won, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What I think is sort of missing from all of this, and maybe this, like, you know, betrays me as a believer in the vibes-based theory of politics.

And that is, is I think part of what the Democratic, part of the problem the Democratic Party has is precisely that so much of its leadership is from the 90s and sort of embodies kind of an elite consensus that I think a lot of people just find alienating. Even if they can't articulate the reasons they find it alienating, even if they find it alienating for what are essentially kind of aesthetic reasons. they still find it alienating and what Trump offers and what kind of like the vulgarity of the Republican Party these days offers is like an explicit and easily understandable way to like flip your nose at, you know, what you might call like bourgeois sensibilities. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's not the fugitive age of the fugitive anymore. Right. Right. And the Democrats believe that it is essentially. And they think, oh, we can roll out. a figure of competence and decency and people will be impressed. And people are saying, fuck that. Who gives a shit? Joe Biden was chair of the judiciary when this movie came out, right?

Like, he was in democratic leadership when this movie came out. Like, it's the same people running the party. It's wild. It's like truly insane that, you know, like. And then you can kind of see the ambient, like the things that are just not even political, just like the ambient, you know, supporting ideological protoplasm is things like this movie, which is just like it sets up a world, a fantasy world that's, you know, extremely attractive, but not necessarily the way the world actually works, you know? In real life,

the guy killed is white. Sorry, this is terribly cynical. real life, he was guilty. And you know what? There was a national campaign to clear this guy. And then guess what? Years later, it turns out he actually did it. So anyway. I will say switching gears just about the movie, not necessarily about the 90s, but Dr. Alex Nichols' worst fake friend in cinematic history, just the pits, right? Like, he's a great villain, though like just a sociopath like a total like great bit of characterization at the end when the jig is up richard kimball has figured out everything he has the proof he confronts his friend i know you've been falsifying your research i know you killed my wife in order to discredit me um all this stuff

and the guy is pissed at him he's pissed at kimball he's like you never give up like like what's wrong with you, you asshole, ruining this for me, ruining this moment for me. My crowning achievement, just total, just the worst person in the world sort of thing. I don't know. I thought that was, I thought that was a great moment of characterization. A nice touch in that regard is just how when you, when Tommy Lee Jones goes to his office, when Tommy, I think it's Tommy Lee Jones and Joey pants go to his office. And there are pictures of Richard Kimball everywhere, just sort of like, no, yeah, this is my best friend. Yeah.

I love, I love Ritchie Kimball. Yeah. Yeah, real piece of shit. Great villain. Great villain. Great villain. I try to, you know, just to, just to, just to say a bit more about the film. And just, I mean, you know, we had, I was, you know, we had the unclear Twitter feed.

And I was looking at, I was looking at some replies and someone was kind of. playfully saying that we're a bit cranky about modern blockbusters, which we are. I'm a very cranky person about modern blockbusters. And, you know, one thing this movie has going for, and this isn't a short movie. I think it clocks in a little over two hours. So it's not, it's, you get it, you're in for, you're in for some time, two hours and 10 minutes exactly is how long it is. But it feels brisk.

And to your point, Michael, earlier, it doesn't dwell on exposition and doesn't try to explain every little thing. And I think that the way this movie moves very quickly, there was somewhat convoluted plot, the way it does, I think, a really great job at various points, like developing the Richard Kimball character, like getting you to give a shit about him. The interrogation scene at the beginning when he's picked up by the cops apparently is, was largely improvised. They kind of just like Harrison Ford didn't want to know what.

the character would say and sort of like came up with the answers on the fly and the reactions on the fly. And I think that that kind of like real commitment to character and letting story and letting everything kind of develop out of what we know about the various players here, Tommy Lee Jones's character. Like we meet him. When we meet him, I go, this guy means business. He's serious. But he's also fair minded. And that's kind of key. And we, we see that develop over time and it's not kind of asserted and it's not sort of, you know, it's not written out in exposition, but it's meant it grows out of how the characters interact with the situation that presented with them. I think part of why this movie just continues to land

with people and continues to really stick is exactly because it is kind of the great example of how to do blockbuster filmmaking in a way that respects the audience and respects the people who have decided to give a little time or money to the film. And I wish, I wish that filmmakers or I'd say studios more than anything else would take that lesson. This is, I mean, we're, this episode marks, I guess, the beginning of our second year with the podcast.

And it really is, you know, one thing I've taken away from watching so many of these films is, is how it's not even about the quality, the relative quality of each movie, but just the way that they all seem to really respect the audience in a way that you just don't see as much anymore. Well, you know, I agree with you about all of that. And I don't know if they're ever going to really make movies. It's not even like we're not asking for much. It's like we're begging for for crumbs here not asking for everything to be

fucking eight and a half you know it's not exactly you know it just just like make a decent good good movie by the way yeah well watch that eight and a half it's terrific but I mean like that's like it's not like we're you know asking for steak

every night it's just like make it something that's just a good movie that you would want to see in the theater and it's fun and then you say hey maybe a couple years later you want to rent it but maybe this is just more 90s nostalgia, you know, like, and, but I don't know. I feel like they could, they could go back to making movies that are, that are strong, like, well made, well made, but, but middle brow, I guess.

Yeah, I think all the pathologies you're talking about, Jamel, like, I don't think people who watch this movie today, who've never seen it, are going to be like, oh, but what about this wasn't explained or this was, like, No. No, they enjoy it. Yeah. Because it's good. Exactly.

Exactly. I came here from the gym and I was talking to my trainer and he was asking what I was doing today. And I told him, and he had never even heard of the movie. And I was like, you should see it, right? Like, it's a good movie. You'll enjoy it. I'm confident. Like, it's hard to imagine someone disliking this movie unless you just don't like sort of

suspenseful actiony movies, right? Like, that's, um, go watch it if you haven't. It's great. which is a good time to begin to wrap up final thoughts last thoughts we didn't really I mean as we said this movie doesn't really have a ton of political content but I do think that like when you consider the character of Richard Kimball and kind of like his position is sort of like a liberal I mean an upper middle class liberal elite type that there is there is something there just in terms of how perceptions of how that person that kind of person was perceived the extent to which the 90s really

were kind of the decade, like the last, I think of the decade for that kind of political archetype and how, you know, I mean, the character, we don't know as politics, but he does, he does feel like the kind of person who, you know, would have raised money for Bill Clinton. My only last thought is just that, like, Harrison Ford was, I think, 50 when they were filming, 49 or 50 and there's like a couple scenes where he's like shirtless and you're like damn dude still had it oh yeah it's still it no no he looks great looks phenomenal like absolutely phenomenal you can tell why this guy was like the biggest star in hollywood for for 15 20 years damn near uh 40 years 30 years yeah yeah like late 70s to the the he begins to fall off in the

early 2000 yeah that's kind of and even fall off just means like he just didn't want to make movies anymore. Right. Yeah. Okay. That is our show. If you are not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Citro Radio, and Google Podcasts, and wherever else podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It does help people find the show. You can reach out to all of us on Twitter. I am at Jay Bowie. John, you are at Lionel underscore trolling. And Michael, you are at underscore. Fleer Ultra, like the, like the playing cards, also 90s and solacea. All right, yeah, yeah.

There's also not playing car, baseball cards, sorry. Right, right, right. There's also at Unclear Pod, which is the Unclear and Present Danger Twitter feed. It's mainly just me tweeting about movies that I watch and occasionally sharing memes. You can reach out to us over email at Unclear and Present Feedback at Fastmail.com for this We can feedback. We have an email from Tracy and Arlington. No subject title, but the email is about a few good men, which we on this podcast do not like.

I know that a few good men isn't good. And Aaron Sorkin, therefore, misogynistic. But I do think it's important politically. It's about the increasing divide between the military and civilian culture. And it's about what it takes to make soldiers capable of what we need to make them capable of doing. Which is increasingly important today as folks worry of the military is soft. and woke. Soft, parenthetical female, woke, parenthetical black. So skip all the strongly object and focus on Jack Nicholson and whether the old breed is still what we need in the post-Cold

war world. Would be a good pairing with Crimson Tide, the older generation and the younger generation trying to figure out what's important from the days of absolute obedience and personal judgment about what's moral and lawful. As I recall, the oath of allegiance and new soldiers take change for Vietnam to say that soldiers only have to follow lawful orders. That's important. Keep up the great pod. That's a strong case for doing a few good men and pairing it with Crimson Tide, which we can totally do. We can just do it in the same month. What do you think, John? Well, I like Crimson Tide a lot and I kind of want to do its own movie. Oh, we would do separate episodes, right? Right, right. Yeah, we do one. Instead of... I mean, we would have a lot

to say about it. I watched it recently because I hadn't seen it when I was young. I was like oh, I've never seen a few good men. I'll watch a few good men. I watched it. I was like, this movie sucks. It's so boring. It has no dramatic center. That one speech is everything

all the movies got going for it. But listen, if people want it, I'm sure we'll have a lot to say about it. I'm willing to do it. Right. Michael, have you seen a few good men? I actually recently rewatched it just in the last weeks. I would say, yeah, I think, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a good movie, but I do think it would be good fodder for this podcast. Yeah, I think there's a lot to say about it, for sure.

Okay. All right. Well, I'll add it to the list. Yeah. And we'll save it. We'll save it for Crimson Tide Month, which is a movie I do love. I fucking love that movie. Episodes come out every other Friday. So we will see you in two weeks with another legal thriller, another Alan Pacula movie. The Pelican Brief. Here is a quick plot synopsis. Two Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. One lone law student has stumbled upon the truth.

An investigative journalist wants her story. Everybody else wants her dead. I also love this movie. It's also, as I think I may have said this to you once, Michael, it's also surprising to me that no one has actually ever tried to preface a Supreme Court justice in real life. You did say that to me once. It surprises me too.

It really does. I mean, I actually recently, like, looked at, like, have there ever been any attempts on the life of Supreme Court justice in the court history? And I do not think there ever has been. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and Alito was just out just the other day saying that, like, oh, we were targets for assassination or whatever.

But, you know, he's also hanging out at Philly's games or whatever. So I don't think he really believes that. No. It's just, it's interesting to me, not because anyone should do it. They should not do that. But because political violence has been so, it's so pervasive throughout American history. And assassinations are generally not that uncommon. Like people, really up until our lifetimes, politicians,

in the U.S. had a pretty decent chance of getting murked, especially high profile ones, right? It was just like, it was not uncommon to get got in the business of doing U.S. politics up until like the 1970s. And even in the 70s, right, like George Wallace

gets shot. Reagan got shot. There's an assassination attempt. Reagan gets shot. I mean, like, just like considering everything, like of the class of politicians who've kind of just escaped that kind of, that kind of experience. It's just sort of funny that it's the court.

Yeah. Yeah. So if you listen to our previous episode on the Hunt for Out October, you know that we now have a Patreon called the unclear and present Patreon. We've done two episodes for the Patreon. The first episode was the spy who came in from the Colt in 1965, John LaCarray adaptation. And then kind of to stay in 65, we follow that up with Thunderball, the fourth movie in the James Bond franchise. That Thunderball episode, which came out last week, is a lot of fun. You get to hear me make my case for why James Bond should stay white.

It's okay for James Bond to be white. You heard of future. So to get access to the Patreon episodes, just got to subscribe to our Patreon. It's patreon.com slash unclear pod. It's $5 a month. And for $5 a month, you basically get a whole another. a whole separate show of us covering the films of the Cold War from the early 1950s all the way to you know the the through the 1980s we're not going any particular chronological

order kind of just like going by how we feel what things what we think might be interesting but that's that's the idea of the Patreon show will also do a monthly mailbag episode where we answer your questions and detail kind of a version of what we do at the end of every main feed episode just for an hour instead of for 10 minutes. And there'll be other stuff. We're thinking of doing sort of physical media giveaways because all these movies are usually available in Blu-ray or 4K. And as a big believer in physical media, I'm trying to get more people to get into it. And so subscribing to the Patreon, we'll throw you into an automatic raffle for a Blu-ray of your choice and lots of other stuff. It's one part, a movie podcast, one part

kind of a, trying to build community for people who like these films, like these discussions. And I think we all think you should sign up for it. So $5 a month, patreon.com slash unclear pod. We already have quite a few subscribers. And we really appreciate everyone who is decided to chip in for this project. We really appreciate the, not just the support, but the faith in our ability is to do this thing that I think that represents. So consider the Patreon. And for the next Patreon episode, we are doing the BBC adaptation of Tinker Taylor A Soldier Spy, which I just started this morning. And it fucking rocks.

Oh, my God. It's so good. It's so good. This is like my 10th time watching it, maybe. And I just can't. It's still good. I never get tired. It's very good.

So if you want to hear us talk about that, sign up for the Patreon. If you want to hear us talk about James Bond or our. previous Likare, send up for the Patreon. And if you want to watch the BBC Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy ahead of the episode, which will come out next week, then you can find it on YouTube or archive. Or archive, it's easily available. And again, it is really great. Sir Alec Guinness plays George Smiley, and he is just Alec Guinnessing all over the place.

Love that guy. Jamel, you kind of have the George Smiley glasses. Did you do? Yeah, I do. I mean, I kind of, I was watching all these movies from the 70s and 80s. I realized I just kind of have like 70s and 80s, style, Millie's man glasses,

which is fine. Whatever. I think I love them. Yeah, they look good. Thank you. I'm wearing a backwards hat, too. So I'm young.

I'm cool. For John Gans and Michael Learoff, I am Jamel Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. See you next time. Watch the fugitive.